Baez: "You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now."

Baez: "The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation."

Baez: "Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job."

Baez: "It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page."

Baez: "I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?"

Baez: "Action is the antidote to despair."

Baez: "I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing."

Baez: "I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations - some large and some small."

Baez: "The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one."

Baez: "If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer."

Baez: "As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses."

Baez: "We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood."

Baez: "I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don't know what's going to rise from the ruins."

Baez: "People say I'm such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I'm a realist."

Baez: "Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry."

Baez: "If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?"